Chapter XXI

Upon one Sunday afternoon a few weeks later, Jocelyn made an expedition with Nielsen to Watts’s Studio in the Melbury Road. It was one of the last days of April. There was a soft grey sky, lit every now and then with watery gleams of sun. They walked across Kensington Gardens, where the trees were full of young, green foliage, and the earth damp with the last of April showers. The birds were calling all round them.

Jocelyn was in one of her most vivid moods. As was usual with her when in high spirits, words rippled from her lips in a way quite irresponsible and very charming. She walked briskly with a springing step, as straight as a dart, her small head thrown slightly back between her shoulders, her eyes dancing and a smile on her lips. She always dressed in a manner peculiar to her own desires, yet she never seemed behind the times--a problem for analytical dressmakers. To-day she had had the whim to put on a black dress, with some creamy lace round the neck and in the front of the bodice. Thus attired and with a black hat, she appealed irresistibly to Nielsen’s sense of the fitness of things. Her small face seemed to gleam out of its black and white setting like a jewel. He squared his figure as he walked, and held his head up with a feeling of pride.

In the Studio groups of people stood, in a subdued light, discussing the pictures in low tones. The spirit of allegory stared out upon them from the walls. Imagination laid a spell upon the eye, and upon the tongue. Jocelyn’s face had become suddenly grave and earnest. The brilliancy went out of her brown eyes, they grew profound, dark, and reverent; her impressionable, artistic nature was at once under the master’s influence. She did not, indeed, lose her sense of criticism, her discrimination, but she seemed to have become in immediate sympathy with the painter’s views and aims, judging him, as it were, from his own standpoint. Nielsen, on the other hand, though by no means unimpressed, retained his own point of view. With his head a little upon one side, and his hand caressing his moustache, he appeared to discuss with himself the merits of each picture in an adjusted see-saw of _pro_ and _con_. For a few minutes they became separated, and when Nielsen came back to her side, he found her standing before the wonderful picture of Paolo and Francesca. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her face was very still, and there were tears in her eyes.

Nielsen said nothing, but stood and looked at the picture too.

He had never seen it before. The tragedy in it arrested him--the measureless tragedy of that man and woman whirled through space in the resistless rush of a linked unrest--the unspeakable, compassionate anguish on the man’s lips, the undying love in his shadowed eyes, the suffering, and the eternal, wistful faith of the woman’s face. If ever the truth of life has been revealed in art, surely it is in that picture. There, is all the joy of life, and all its suffering, endless motion, and triumphant love.

Nielsen experienced a kind of indignation--it was unpleasantly disturbing. He swallowed a lump in his throat and turned away abruptly, he did not care to look at it too long. It was a relief to hear a man behind him remark to a woman that the “glass” was going down. After all, those were the things that mattered, luckily, more than a hundred dismal pictures. The “glass” was going down! That was infinitely satisfactory. He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and worked them gently up and down. He felt much better. Then he wiped his eyeglass, and looked at Jocelyn.

She was still standing in front of the picture, looking as if she were going to faint. All his indignation returned. He went and got her a chair, put it down with its back to the picture, and made her sit in it. His eyes glowed angrily, and he twisted his moustache fiercely. Then he expressed his feelings--

“I should like to get that Monsieur Watts, and hang him on the walls of his own studio as a--a--pr-recept.” When he had caught the word, he hissed it from under his moustache.

“I consider it is quite indecent, don’t you know--the--the--confounded picture has made you ill.”

A rush of colour had come into Jocelyn’s cheeks, and, as she got up from her chair, she said--

“It’s very stupid of me! Don’t abuse the picture, please, I love it. It’s only coming into this hot room after the walk. I’m all right now.” She insisted on going round the studio again, and even upon discussing the merits of the various pictures, but they both avoided the “Paolo and Francesca,” and Nielsen knew by the tone of her voice that she was not herself.

On the way home in a cab, she hardly spoke at all, and leant back gazing straight in front of her. Nielsen became garrulous; he did not in the least understand what was the matter, but he considerately wished by chatter to divert her thoughts.

“Prrogress, civilisation!” he said, spreading his fingers out of the cab into an inattentive space, and bending forward with puckered eyes, “Ah! The ‘artist!’ He is nowhere. It is all ‘the man of action,’ don’t you know. He leads the way--he is the cause. The other fellow is only the effect, you see; he exists because there is somebody there already to hold him out his brread and butter. Look at the Romans! Ah! There you have the rreal Philistine. But look at his civilisation; look at his rroads, look at his baths, he--wăshed! They were men of action, and they held the brread and butter in their hands, don’t you know, for the other fellows to come and eat. Look at this country! Here you have more frreedom, more comfort, more justice than anywhere else that I have been; and yet you are barbarous men of action, don’t you know. Not one in a hundred of you has any sense of form or colour, but you manage to have as much art and as much music and literature, on the whole, as any other country. It is all a case of brread and butter, you see. You can pay the--how do you say it--the piper, so you call the tune.”

Jocelyn shook her head gently and said, “There are two sides to that.”

“Certainly, my dear young lady, there are two sides to every question. I am quite willing to hear the other side--but to me music--pictures--books, they are all frrills, charrming frrills. They don’t begin till the garment is completed. They rrise out of leisure, and there is _not_ any leisure, don’t you see, until there is alrready a civilisation. After all, a man must eat--that comes first.” He nodded his head mournfully, as if the fact were painful to him.

But all his efforts to draw her into argument were of no avail; the drive ended silently, and he left her at the door of the Mansions. He walked away slowly eastwards, looking absently at the grey water running through the dark arches of the bridge, and every now and then shaking his head gravely.

Jocelyn climbed the two flights of stairs to the flat, and let herself in with her key. She went straight to her bedroom, the thought of her aunt’s society at that moment was intolerable to her, and she muffled her footsteps as she passed the drawing-room.

She took off her hat and gloves, and flung herself into a chair in front of the empty fireplace. She sat there for some minutes, rocking herself to and fro, with her hands crossed in her lap.

She was haunted by that picture, its endless whirlwind of motion, its anguish. In the face of Paolo something reminded her of Giles. It seemed to her that she read in the picture, for herself and for him, the cruel denial of rest, the resistless decree of an eternal punishment through immeasurable space.

She sprang to her feet, and paced to and fro the length of her room, pressing her hands to her throbbing temples. After a time, the soft monotony of her own footsteps on the carpet soothed her; she paused in front of the window, and flung it open. The air was sweet and warm, and there was a faint sound of raindrops plashing gently on the young leaves of the trees. The church clock was striking “five.” She shut her eyes and listened--another and another echoed the refrain, till the world seemed full of a wistful chiming. It ceased. She reached her hand out along the window, leaning against the half-opened casement. Some drops of rain fell upon her face.

The paroxysm of her pain had passed away, she only felt alone--very tired, and alone.

Presently she bathed her face with cold water, changed her dress, and went to the drawing-room pale and quite calm.

Mrs. Travis, upright in her chair, with watchful green eyes and a silver-grey dress, was playing “Patience.” Jocelyn shivered a little.